Stopover Course: 6 Stopover Posts To Go From Beginner To Pro

One reason miles are so much cooler than paying cash is stopovers. Plus, there’s the added benefit of not paying money. 😀

But seriously, a cash ticket raises the price when you add a stop. But many airlines allow you to make a stop for as long as you want when using miles. Some airlines allow multiple stopovers.

Personally, I earn most of my miles from credit sign up bonuses and try to avoid revenue tickets all together. Given that nearly all my flights are with miles, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to learn the routing rules and stopover rules for each mileage program in order to see as many places as possible. You only live once, might as well see as much of the world as possible.

This post will be an “A to Z” kind of post starting with references for learning exactly what a stopover is, and ends with booking the crazier tickets out there.

1) A Visual Explanation on Stopovers

Link: Stopovers and Open-jaws [InfoGraphic]

This is super basic, but a lot of people understand the stopover and open-jaw concepts better with visual. There’s therefore no better explanation of stopovers than this InfoGraphic my wife and I made to explain the basics of stopovers using miles.

Here are the basics:

• A stopover is a stop more than 24 hours and can be as long as you want.
• An open-jaw is a gap in a ticket where the airline isn’t responsible for your transit. When you fly into one city and out of another.

 

2) An Introduction to Stopovers and Open-jaws

Link: An Introduction to Stopovers and Open-jaws

This is a much longer and more in depth view of the basics of what stopovers are. This post talks about how to book stopovers, how to fill open-jaws, booking both stopovers and open-jaws in one ticket, as well as the very basics and some crazy stuff. This post is an A to Z view in its own.

 

3) Complete List of Airline Stopovers With Miles

Link: List of Airline Stopover Rules

This is probably the single best resource on stopovers I have. Bookmark it or bookmark the “Resources” page on which this post is the second icon.

 

There’s so much I could say about this post and yet it speaks for itself. It is just a chart that lists each airline and their stopover rules.

For example United Miles allow 1 stopover and 2 open-jaws. American and Delta miles don’t allow any stopovers. ANA miles range from 0 stopovers on basic awards, to 7 stopovers on their very generous round-the-world award chart.

But there are so many airlines, how is anyone supposed to remember this stuff? Hopefully the answer is that you book mark the best page on the internet. :-p

This is a great resource, for sure, but it doesn’t really talk about earning the miles. So this is a great post if you pair it and compare it to the Master Chart of Earning Miles and Points from Credit Cards.

This post actually lists every specific credit card that could earn miles or transfer to miles for each airline. So for example the United miles section lists the united credit cards and all the Chase cards that transfer to United miles.

Although another way of doing this would be to just look at the “Cheapest Miles To Series” which lists transfer partners and prices for each region.

Either way, if you compare the list of stopover rules to the post on which airline credit cards earn these miles you can start to dream up a great trip with just a credit card or two.

 

4) Cool examples of stopover tickets

Link: 9 Amazing Stopover Tickets

This recent post walks you through examples of different stopover tickets using Alaska Miles, Lufthansa Miles, United Miles, British Airways Avios, Air Canada Miles, Asia Miles, and ANA Miles.

The reason I really recommend this post is to show you what is possible. One stopover could mean a stop in London on the way to Rome… Or it could mean a stop in London on the way to Bali! Even if you’re not interested in such a long flight, it shows you what is possible in different regions.

And it doesn’t just show you what is possible in different regions, it shows you what is possible with different miles. If you have Alaska Miles, this will show you the concepts and possible options. If you have Avios, this will give you ideas. It’s good for teaching and brainstorming.

 

5) United stopover secrets

Link: United Stopover and Routing Rule Secrets 

Can I do something a little odd, and maybe less helpful? I won’t tell you what I wrote in the post, I’ll tell you what other people said about the post.

This post has 363 comments.

Some comments include:

• “Blogging gold. This is genius.”
• “I read it, then reread it, and if I can figure out how to print it I will to keep studying.”
• “I read this, and a lot (most) of it made my head spin. I can sense the sheer power that this level of understanding of the awards chart and routing rules unleashes, but for now that level of mastery eludes me.”
• “amazing. must read, and re-read again…and again.”

Or this:

@TravelisFree … pic.twitter.com/kkWnNYKVdU

— Sven Luckermans (@SvenLuckermans) October 2, 2013

Reason enough to read it?

 

6) Hopper posts

Link: Hopper Posts

The concept of this series is just to take stopovers to the max to see a specific region.

It started when I decided to fly from Guam to the Cooke Islands (in Business Class) round trip for 40,000 miles and see how many places I could visit on the way.

I ended up doing Guam, an 18+ hour layover in Singapore, 2 week stopover in New Zealand, 2 week destination time in Cooke Islands, 16 hour layover in Sydney, and I got off the plan in Japan (instead of returning to Guam).

We spent multiple days in 4 countries, and layovers in 2 countries. And we flew business class (with lie flat beds) for something like 30+ hours of flying.

 

I think the next ticket I made into a “hopper” was trying to force a 23 hour layover in Aruba on a oneway ticket to Puerto Rico. Now this is absurd because Aruba isn’t exactly on the way. Plus, we had to route through Panama City for 17.5 hours. Because flights to the Caribbean are often early, we had 25 hours in Aruba (and stayed at the Renaissance which has a boat that takes you from the lobby to the private island), 17.5 hours in Panama City, and then spent a week in Puerto Rico.

The trend of trying to come up with hopper routes has continued for me and this blog. Check out the “Hopper” tag and get up to date.

 

Conclusion

The goal here is to give links that will teach you everything you need to know. Even if you don’t know what a stopover is, the tools are to go from not knowing anything about stopovers to understanding the more complicated posts.

And while it seems confusing or daunting at first, you’ll find patterns, or that many of the routing rules are the same. But in general, you try to figure out what is allowed, then you try to figure out how to make what you want to do work. If you’re really going crazy, maybe then you look into restrictions or routing rules.

But I find that the tickets most people ask about are totally bookable. If it says you’re allowed one stopover, then yes, you can stop in any two cities in Europe. Don’t worry about it, just try it. It’s when people get really crazy that they actually need to understand the routing rules.

Wasn’t sure what to call this kind of post, but I hope this mini “course” style post was helpful! Let me know if you like it.